


The Jewel of the Sea

by Anonymous



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Creepy Fluff, F/M, Lovecraftian Shenanigans, Lysithea is an Eldritch horror, Mentions of Death, Psychological Horror, Uncanny Valley, light mindfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27326656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Claude stood before the creaking Jewel, feeling the grey ocean tousle his hair with a gentle, chilling breeze. In his briefcase he had three important things – a dogeared notebook, a handful of newspaper clippings, and a gun. He slipped through a narrow split in the rusted fence outside, ignoring the faded signs that said DANGER. KEEP OUT.He had to know if the rumours were true.__________________The hollow skeleton of a half-built mall sits, serene, at the center of a swirl of dark rumours. Whispered stories of sirens, of folks going missing, of reckless exploring the old site and coming back-wrong. Haunted in his dreams by the whispered singing of something - someone? calling to him, Claude will stop at nothing to find out what they mean.
Relationships: Lysithea von Ordelia/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Anonymous, Fodlan Frights Halloween Exchange 2020





	The Jewel of the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slotumn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slotumn/gifts).



‘ _The Jewel of the Sea’-_ it was the coked-up pipe dream of architects and businessmen of decades now long passed – a glittering metropolis of a shopping mall built directly on the seam of the ocean and the shore. The drawings had been spectacular – Claude had seen them. _Imagine,_ the design brief had flaunted, _a shopping experience unlike any other._ Glass walkways where lovely dames could compare the colours of the garments on sale to the coral reefs below, and sub level shopping where families could marvel at the sea life in their natural habitat while enjoying a pleasant food court meal. It was a pity that corruption, inflation and endless bureaucratic hoops had robbed the city of such a spectacle. The hollow skeleton of a half-built mall now lay rotting at the docks, condemned and branded too dangerous to enter.

Claude stood before the creaking Jewel, feeling the grey ocean tousle his hair with a gentle, chilling breeze. In his briefcase he had three important things – a dogeared notebook, a handful of newspaper clippings, and a gun. He slipped through a narrow split in the rusted fence outside, ignoring the faded signs that said DANGER. KEEP OUT.

Claude had to know if the rumours were true. He didn’t know why it wasn’t all over the front page, or all over the radio. He didn’t know why nobody else could seem to see what he was seeing. The dots were just lying there, waiting to be connected. He collected what he could, small snippets and seemingly innocuous stories from the back pages of the morning news, and hastily scrawled transcripts of the crackling radio taken over suppertime. Missing dock workers (‘no good runaways’ was the popular consensus) and children returning home from their day at the beach, but coming home different. Touched. Sick. Claude couldn’t commit it to words, but he knew somehow that the Jewel was housing more than just wharf rats and cobwebs. She kept her secrets close to her heart.

See, all of these cases were connected, there was no doubt about it. He had heard whispers from his contacts in the city. The children, they drew runes at play, obsessively rendering obscure symbols and writing what looked to be words that no-one could understand. When asked, they have no memory of what they were doing. They have no idea what the symbols mean. The men who work the shipyards nearby won’t approach the Jewel for tales of sirens and specters, dangerous things that cannot leave their cemetery of decomposing steel and stone but instead call to unsuspecting victims to join them in a watery grave.

Claude did not have to see the symbols. He did not have to hear the sirens’ songs. He knew them well. They had come to him in his dreams for as long as he could remember. They were a part of him. He would stop at nothing to find out what they meant.

Motes of dust stirred in the inky twilight filtering through the crumbled ceiling. Nobody had set foot in here for years, that much was certain. His back grew stiff as he ventured deeper inside – growing ever reliant on the dim glow of the flashlight he held tightly in his fist. A tile cracked and gave way under Claude’s feet, tumbling noisily through the exposed flooring frames into a deep, hollow level beneath and he scrambled towards the wall, clutching his briefcase with white knuckles. Carefully, he inched deeper into the heart of the Jewel, extremely aware of the fragility of the flooring that lay between him and the vast nothingness below. His pulse skipped in his throat.

At a glance, it was easy to see the vision of the glamorous mall that was not to be. Hollow shells, large enough for all manner of department stores, were lined by wide walkways and open plan fixtures. Yet the further Claude ventured, the more narrow the walkways became, twisting like a burrow – he could not quite recall if he had seen such a design in the floor plans. Clearly just a passage for the maintenance crew.

The flashlight in Claude’s hands crept across the floor, until it fell on a door a few feet ahead. A dead end. There was a prickle at the back of his neck and Claude turned, squinting against the quiet gloom. All was still. He pushed the sensation from his mind, and devoted his energy to studying the door before him with interest. He tried to turn the latch but it was a dead weight, heavy and immovable. He threw his shoulder against it, but only succeeded in dirtying his sleeves and making an awful noise.

Bent at the knees, Claude peered through the keyhole at the latch. Try as he might to maneuver his flashlight, all he could see beyond was a glimpse of the most brilliant shade of red – intense like something brightly painted had been pushed right up against the door. Claude felt a gentle breath stir the curls at his ear and slowly he turned, his blood as thick as honey and as cold as an icebox in his veins. He was alone and the corridor was silent. It was not so uncommon for an old structure like this to be draughty, he told himself as he continued trying to peer into the room beyond. It looked dark now, much like the corridor he was presently standing in. As he pressed closer, trying to find where the red hue had gone, the door hinges screeched and the door swung inwards as the sound of unyielding metal on metal echoed along the narrow walls. It felt the same as opening a door to a friend. The hall beyond was just as dark, but it was welcoming.

Claude found himself at the top of a set of stairs leading down. The space below felt cold, as though he might descend into the ocean itself. Inexplicably it seemed easier to see, though there was no source of light he could discern coming out of the dark. Once both his feet touched the smeared stone of the room below, his racing heart seemed to quieten. Something was telling him that this was the right place.

Fumbling, he unlatched his briefcase, flipping through his tattered notebook, his flashlight illuminating every page which showed the same thing - a perfect sigil, drawn in blood. The symbols from his dreams. Every night. He felt as though he may recognise them better than his own face in a mirror.

With a steady hand he began to trace the symbol once more into the filth and grime coating the floor. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Claude felt an eerie calm wash over him as he quietly became aware that he had drawn the symbol on every available surface in the room, including the walls, and his index finger was rubbed red and raw and his throat was cracked dry from repeating words in languages he had never spoken.

Then he turned and it was there.

He found perceiving it to be quite impossible. It was both shapeless and every shape at once. It existed in colours Claude did not even know the name of. Simply being in the same room made him feel like he was being torn apart by every fibre in his body and mended like a scrapped piece of fabric. The pistol was in his hand, but he did not remember reaching into his briefcase to get it.

“What are you?” Claude asked, trying to fixate on just one feature. He could do so no more than he could distinguish a single drop of water in the ocean outside.

“You speak,” the creature replied in a voice that could not be heard, the intrusive sound rattling inside of Claude’s skull.

“I speak.”

“Interesting,” came the reply. Claude could not be certain that they were communicating in any language known to humankind. “You called to me. You enter and you demand my identity. So human. So human.”

“I don’t mean you any harm,” Claude replied warily, his back against the wall.

Stagnant water dripped from the ceiling, a single plink the only sound for an eternity.

“You lack the means,” the creature said, in Claude’s own voice. A taunt. Claude raised the gun he was clenching tightly, but his fist was empty. Slowly, he began to doubt he ever owned a gun. He was rapidly losing the concept of what a gun even was.

He realised he was sinking, being enveloped in an indescribable mass. Part of the creature had taken hold of him, like it was marveling at a shiny rock.

“This.” The creature held something to his face. Claude could hardly discern which way was up or which way he was facing. What was a face? “Focus, human. This.” Claude shook his head and found some of the fog clouding his vision clear. What he saw was not unlike an octopus’ tentacle coiled around a hard candy – one of the boiled sweets he kept in his vest pocket. “I will have this.” The creature was not asking.

“You want… candy?” Claude asked, staving off the feeling of the walls closing in around him, “if that’s what you want, I have more.”

“More. Yes.”

Claude emptied his pockets. As a handful of sweets in bright wrappers tumbled out of his jacket, they were snatched from the air by a pair of fair, delicate hands. A young woman stood where the creature had been, her eyes closed as though she were adrift in her own dreaming.

“Regular men cannot stand before me,” the woman said, her voice carrying around the room like a bell though her lips did not move from their pleasant smile, “their minds burn and their eyes see naught but the endless suffering of their kind. They die. They always die. So human. So human.”

“Do you kill them?” Claude found his voice was barely a whisper, try as he might to project an air of confidence.

“Yes. No. They’re human. They die.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

The woman creature seemed to contemplate him for a moment, her head tilted to the side.

“You have brought… an offering. A tribute to Lysithea.”

“L-Lysithea?” Claude ventured, feeling the same knot in his stomach as he did when traversing the crumbling floor above, “is that your name?”

“I am Lysithea. I am everything and I am nothing. I bear no offerings to my name, therefore I do not have one. I am Lysithea.”

The words churned through his mind. The creature was nothing if not contradictory. Like a flash of lightning, something came to his mind.

“You’re… new? A new… creatu-being?” Claude adjusted his words on a dime as the woman’s brow furrowed. It was insane, but he felt as though he might actually be… relating to the creature that twisted his mind and words like they were nothing more than a toy. “Like… a child?”

“ _I am NOT a child!!”_ The words spilled from Claude’s own mouth in a petulant shriek, though he was not the one speaking them.

“I’m sorry!” Claude forced out in his own voice, throwing his hands up to shield himself and the furious noise ceased, “I just thought-- and you like sweets, so--”

“You bring the tributes to this place. You also like them. _Your_ existence is not that of an infant.” The room in the air grew icy.

“That’s true.”

Lysithea seemed to gaze down at her cupped palms, filled to the brim with candy, though her eyes remained gently closed. Claude blinked and at least three had disappeared in an instant. The air began to feel less frozen.

“Why are you here?” Claude pressed cautiously, “do you know about the symbols?”

“Yes. Lysithea calls to those who might follow her.”

“So you put them…” Claude gestured towards his own temples, “in my head?”

“Yes.”

Claude ran his hands through his hair. More candy had disappeared, but he couldn’t say that he’d seen her unwrap or eat any of them. She continued to hold them in cupped hands, like she was showing them off.

“I like you,” Lysithea hummed happily, “my kind need tributes to live. Praise. No other men have been able to stand before me and speak. You are different. You can praise Lysithea. You can bring tributes.”

“You want me to… bring you candy?”

“Oh yes. The little humans. They had these tributes, but they could not stand to see this form. I do not hurt them. They will one day forget.”

“So if I bring you sweets… you’ll stop hurting people?”

Lysithea frowned. “Yes. Suffering was never my intention.”

“You… just need someone to...” Claude tried to find a better phrase, but none came, “… do your bidding? Bring more… tributes?”

“It is as you say.” Lysithea’s voice was cloyed with happiness.

Claude exhaled. He had so many more questions, but it looked like he would have nothing but time to ask them. He dug around in the pockets of his trousers, producing a few extra treats and dropping them in Lysithea’s hands like an obedient pet might. She opened her eyes and Claude found they were the most brilliant shade of red.

“Well then, Lysithea, you better tell me which kind you like.”  
  
  



End file.
